The Remains of Autumn
by cagd
Summary: Egon encounters an old classmate in a dream, and learns that sometimes the ghosts you see are the ghosts you own.
1. Chapter 1

Late one fall night in Cleveland, OH, a bundle hit the water from the upstream side of the Hope Memorial Bridge. Its downward flight stirred up the pigeons roosting in the bridge's underpinnings, causing them to fly out into the garish yellow light of the streetlights decorating the bridge's upper surface. They landed in uneasy cooing masses on the Art Deco railings in a shower of droppings and loose feathers.

As the man who dropped whatever it was over those same railings shambled back to a beat up pickup truck and brought it to reluctant life, the bricks weighting the bundle down came untied from the clumsily knotted extension cords which bound it, so that the bundle popped to the surface, shedding the worn blue plastic tarp which wrapped it.

Spinning lazily, the contents of the bundle became entangled in a mass of logs and other detritus that had built up around one of the structure's massive tower foundations, thanks to upstream flooding, as overhead semis roared into the night.

The following morning, traffic on the Hope Memorial Bridge was backed up for miles.


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey, asshole! Do you know you're standing in a pool of blood?"

Egon looked down at his heavy boots and only saw the damp fading leaves of early November and a crumpled gum wrapper.

"Forget it, it's fading." He looked up at a small woman further dwarfed by a large canvas on a battered easel, which was decorated by a dangling row of decapitated Barbies and one disintegrating troll doll. "Now get the fuck out of my way, I got work to do - I'm losing the vision."

To the sound of bristles and paint being scrubbed across a rough surface, Egon moved slowly across a stretch of damp grass, leaves, and discarded fast food wrappers. A glance over at the horizon told him he was in Central Park, about half past noon if the shadows were any indication.

"I SAID, get the FUCK outta my WAY. You deaf or something?" She gestured to the left of where Egon was standing, wondering how he'd gotten to Central Park without remembering how he'd gotten there wearing only pajamas and a pair of work boots without so much as a subway token or a PKE meter.

Except for the lack of a PKE meter, most of life for Egon was like that – the fact that he'd just been told twice that he was an asshole reinforced the reality, though he couldn't possibly _be_ an asshole, as a live, free roaming anal sphincter without a means of life support was physically impossible except perhaps in the spirit world... which might bear investigating… then there was the lack of subway tokens and even more worrisome lack of a PKE meter, but it was blood that caught his attention.

"Blood," Reaching down into a non-existent cargo pocket for the still non-existent PKE meter, Egon kicked his way through fallen leaves and torn open condom wrappers towards the foul-mouthed little artist, "Do you see it now?"

She sighed, picking up a pack of cigarettes, lipped one out and lit it, free hand busy with a brush loaded with scarlet paint, "I SAID... never mind, it's _fading_." She dropped the lighter in among a mass of half-used paint tubes and well-used brushes, and through a cloud of bluish smoke added, "You're still in my way."

"The blood, animal or human?"

"How the hell should I know? Blood's blood, the way I see it - maybe from a mugging. Now back the fuck off or I'll mace you." Her free hand indicated a large can strapped to one hip before going back to managing the cigarette. "You've been warned, _asshole_."

Dab.

Dab.

Dab.

Egon moved closer, unconsciously pushing his glasses back up his nose, studying the roughed-in image of a bleak forest landscape where ghosts glared out at him from behind monochromatic trees with bare branches. More streamed across a gray sky of broken clouds. Blowing smoke from her nose, artist jabbed at him with the scarlet-loaded brush, "Yo, back off or I'll call a cop."

"You're in Central Park, but you aren't _painting_ Central Park, or are you - the trees are the same, but leafless."

Another blast of smoke, "So? I paint what I see." She went back to dabbing in painted red eyes.

"Where's the blood? It's not in the picture, and I don't see it here." Egon pointed about 30 feet in front of the canvas.

"I said, asshole, it's faded. Now get the hell away or I'll call a cop." She brandished the mace as Egon stepped back to get an overall look at her work.

"You're that artist, the one that outsider gallery in The Village is promoting."

"You're not as stupid as you look, asshole - my Gawd you're tall as I remember... what a hat rack!"

"I am not a hat rack." Egon stated flatly. "I own exactly one winter hat. I keep it in a drawer. Nor am I an asshole. My being_ both_ an asshole and a hat rack are physically impossible."

"You ain't changed a bit." More blue smoke.

"You know me?"

She spat out the cigarette, extinguishing it underfoot, "We went to school together for nearly six years, asshole until you bailed out on us in the sixth grade. Hell, our yards were back to back." Her hand was still on the mace, but it had relaxed somewhat.

Distracted from the painting, a dark mirror of the landscape they stood in, Egon remembered.

_For someone his parents told was beneath him, Erzulie Sappington had caused him a lot of trouble over the years._

_Kindergarten was when it started. Only there becasue he legally had to despite his early brilliance and towering over his new classmates, Egon had very logically told the tiny girl who lived behind him in a tumbledown tract house and whose eyes were always watching things that weren't there, that because of her small size she was obviously a mere 3 years old. Therefore, she needed to be with the preschoolers in the day care center across the street where she could play in the sandbox and eat paste all she wished... _

_It took two teachers to pull her off of Egon so that he had to spend the first day of school not doing quantum physics as he'd expected, but sucking on an ice pack until his loosened front teeth stopped bleeding, the scratches on his face and neck bright yellow with iodine._

_That night, with a police officer standing in the background, Mr. Sappington came over from his unkempt side of the property line and paid to have Egon's glasses repaired. Reeking of beer, he'd called Egon's father some of the same illogical things Erzulie had called Egon at school as he handed over a roll of crumpled, greasy bills before stomping back into the dilapidated house._

_There had been shrieks and a rhythmic slapping sound after the door of the slowly collapsing house slammed shut behind the man in his shabby mechanic's uniform._

_The officer got back in his car and drove away without comment._

_Egon learned his lesson; avoiding whenever possible the hot-tempered little girl with the long black braids and nearly black brown eyes that liked to draw while staring out the window at things which weren't there. Still, having Erzulie around DID have it's advantages: the rest of the class made fun of her shabby clothes, foul mouth, and crazy grandmother; for a boy who was more interested in building a combustion engine than in "The Dukes of Hazzard", and later on girls, having somebody else take the heat cut down on Egon being called "Weird-Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh", EEEEEEEEEEEEEE-gone!" and "Jerk!" while getting his hair pulled and his underpants elastic yanked up over his head on the long bus ride home by the time they both were in sixth grade._

_Extracting your head from your underwear really cuts into research time._

_On weekends they ignored each other at the property line, which grew ever more and more unkempt on Erzulie's side as the years passed. Eventually Egon's father paid to have a fence put up, blocking off the sight of Erzulie taking care of her crazier and crazier grandmother, a tiny bent woman with tangled white hair who screamed at things that weren't there even as Egon planned his own battles with the Boogeyman and blew up the garage._

_What was incomprehensible to Egon even then, was that despite being somebody everyone called white trash, Erzulie was a straight A student; even beating him out in the 3rd grade science fair when he didn't take into account that the judges, though impressed by his scale model of a black hole with a simulated downward sucking effect, were more impressed by her display of salt crystals grown in different mediums._

_Egon had to admit; though his black hole was accurate down to the last theoretical detail, Erzulie's display with it's delicate frost of salt had been more visually impressive – even if the red ribbon he'd won no thanks to her blue, had gotten him grounded: no Carl Sagan on T.V. for a month – he'd been so upset that he blew up the garage again that night, only on purpose._

_And now, here she was again, in Central Park: Dirty Erzulie, braids now streaked with gray and down to the back of her calves which were covered in paint smeared denim, smoking as heavily as she had since the fourth grade._

_"You're the asshole who got me a belting the first day of Kindergarten."_

_"You broke my glasses. They were trifocals."_

_"I was the same age as you. I didn't belong in preschool."_

_"Why isn't the blood you said I was standing in earlier in your painting?"_

_Erzulie pushed at Egon as he leaned over her work, bumping the easel so that the dolls danced. "I SAID, it ruined my composition. The river of ghosts would have lost impact - which isn't my point."_

_"What ghosts?" again Egon reached for his non-existent PKU Meter._

_"They're everywhere, can't you of all people see them?"_

_"I left my PKE Meter in my other pair of pants." Egon paused, studying her sharply cut profile, "Have you ever had your eyes tested?"_

_"I never needed a machine to see this shit." Erzulie waved a dismissive hand. There was an 8 ball tattooed in between her thumb and forefinger. With a crack in it._

_Egon remembered a Times article from a few days ago halfway to the back page, "Your paintings aren't fantasy, they're reality."_

_Erzulie paused in another light-up, same old nearly black eyes boring into him - no, not into him, but at a point about five feet behind him._

_Egon turned, seeing nothing but a leaf strewn sidewalk and trash can. Erzulie laughed and loudly rinsed her brush in turpentine, "Dead jogger, head beaten in, not enough juice to be something you and your pals get paid to remove."_

_Erzulie too, had been reading the paper._

_"How long have you…?"_

_"All my life." Erzulie fiddled with the lighter before dropping it and the cigarettes back into the jumble of paint tubes and brushes. "After I got screwed out of that full ride scholarship to RISD by that blonde cheerleader who couldn't even Draw Pokey: she only took P.E. classes the second half of our Senior year when I took a full academic load. Sooooo, I muddled through four years on my own dime at some no-name backwoods State University buried in the Midwest. After getting fired from my third job in advertising, I started painting what I saw. Granny saw 'em too. Made her crazy. Me? It made me a living... paid for rehab... and anger management classes..." She looked up at him, head cocked. "And you?"_

_Egon looked away without meaning to. The disappointment in his father's eyes, his mother's eyes, their cold disapproval when his MIT scholarships didn't materialize as planned, instead going to some older kid whose dad owned the biggest Ford dealership in the region, a Senior that Egon tutored when he was in the fifth grade - a massive hulk with a hairy back who flunked Algebra I twice and thought mice hatched from eggs… but who was on the varsity football team when his high school had come in first in their division for the first time in a decade…_

_"I liked your salt display." he mumbled._

_"You were always better at math than me." Erzulie rocked back and forth on her heels, focusing on the top of a distant skyscraper._

_"You could draw a straight line without a ruler." Egon added, staring at the distant burnt stump of what had once been a luxury apartment building from the 1920s._

_"Shit, why didn't you ask me to help with the Boogeyman? I would have climbed that damned fence. AND I would have brought one of my old man's tire irons… or his belt."_

_"You knew?" Egon forgot about counting the windows on the top floor of some high-rise, and stared at her._

_"Son of a Bitch told me after I smacked him on the head with a broken chair leg! He said you were smarter, but I was more violent."_

_They stood silently facing each other, Egon polishing his glasses, the canvas a background against the remains of autumn, two different visions of Central Park, both accurate._

_Finally he broke the silence, "We were on the same team, the whole time and never knew,"_

_The canvas fell off the easel in a sudden gust of wind and broken dolls, spilling black, white, and red paint onto the damp grass and leaves..._

…Egon sat up in bed, reaching for his glasses while turning on the light on the nightstand. In the snore-filled half darkness of the fire station he picked up a crumpled newspaper from the floor beside the bed from where it had fallen to cover a pair of damp, grass-stained work boots.

As the traffic of the day shift warmed up to a slow, dull roar, Egon shuffled through to the arts section: he was right.

Someone named Erzulie Sappington was giving a show for the next two months at a small Village gallery specializing in occult and outsider artists.

Though the name was the same, he could still be wrong.

"Day off Egon, where you gonna go? Natural History Museum, molds and fungi department?" Peter wandered past half-asleep, coffee cup in one hand.

Egon paused - fungi held a lot of appeal, _however:_ "I may go and visit an art gallery."

If he did, he'd take a PKE Meter.


	3. Chapter 3

It took Egon two hours to find the gallery after a long, crowded subway ride followed by a ride in a taxi driven by a man who apparently considered bathing a sin. The smell of the taxi driver drove Egon to walk the last few blocks – where, armed with an address written down on the back of an old job sheet and a PKE meter, he found it crammed between a coffee house and a junk store which specialized not in "junk" but "junque".

Junque or junk aside, he pushed past the prolapse of other people's discarded things for sale at top prices, though there _was_ a phrenological head that might bear coming back for later, and made it into the gallery where he was assaulted by the stench of cheap patchouli and dragon's blood incense.

He also attracted the attention of a short, fat man with a pierced nose and spiked hair which only accentuated the fact that not only was he going bald, but that he would never see 50 again in ANYONE'S lifetime.

Rapidly patting his heavily ringed and pudgy hands together, the little man waddled over to him, rubber spiders and plastic skulls swinging from the heavy chrome chains piled around his neck, nearly obscuring his leather bustier. Egon also couldn't help notice that the little man was wearing a kilt, garters, fishnet tights, and stiletto heels.

Egon had trapped and cataloged weirder things than this… person, but not many. As he started to beat a hasty retreat from the claustrophobic space and its occupant, a painting caught his eye from where it hung on the stripped to the bricks wall among a mass of paintings of weeping vampires and male dark-winged angels stripped to the waist.

"Ohhhhh yes," the little man trilled, nose ring bobbing. Temporarily distracted, Egon stared, mesmerized by how it kept perfect time with what the wearer said. "I see you are a serious collector, Pay no attention to all this drama, it used to be Punk was all the rage, now it's something called Goth," He rolled his heavily mascara-ringed eyes, "This new trend uses most of the same aesthetics- I've simply SAVED a bundle on wardrobe –these days, if you want to sell twee and tat disguised as art, you have GOT to keep ahead of the trends… oh how I miss Warhol and his Factory… oooooh! I see you've got an eye on an Erzulie Sappington, the only REAL art in this place – I discovered her sleeping in her car last October –in the back of that eyesore of a BMW she had a STACK, and I do mean a STACK of the most simply MARVELOUS paintings – and nowhere to sell them."

Egon walked past the man, nose ring forgotten.

It was the same painting.

The stream of ghosts over the skyline was there. The ones glaring out from behind the bare trees all dwarfed by the buildings, which loomed threateningly over Central park – everything was there.

Except for the pool of blood in the foreground.

Egon frowned at the sudden blast of music that sounded like someone was having an appendectomy without the benefit of anesthesia to the scream of a chainsaw. The singer, him, her, or it, was wailing something about the sorrows of being a dark angel and the joys drinking Type O. Ray from the original container; Stanz getting his tongue stuck to a frozen doorknob last January had more musicality. Two more customers entered, tall thin creatures of indeterminate gender draped in black, plastic fangs jutting out over their black painted lower lips. Egon took out his PKE meter, gave them a cursory reading, and put it away – they read human. The gallery owner abandoned the sound system and all but skipped to the newcomers.

Deafened by the howls of the sound system, Egon moved along the painting hung wall, searching for more Erzulie Simpsons with little success before returning to the first painting, standing about five feet back from it while polishing his glasses.

"Yes," the little man cooed, after having seen the two out the door empty handed and turning the sound system down to a background snarl of musical rip sawing, "You sir, are a man of taste, I can tell, I CAN TELL. Those two? Pfui! No money, not worth the effort, but you sir, are DECIDEDLY a man of taste. This, _this_ one is the last – she asked me to hold this one back until this morning. I've just hung it - you're the first to see it." The nose ring wobbled up and down, "Too bad I don't know where she is – should you buy this one, the best I assure you, of the entire portfolio AND original, If I ever find her again, she hasn't dropped by for a week, not even to claim her check, you know how artists are… If I ever find her again, I'd commission a series from her based off of just this one alone!"

"How much?" Egon would have preferred the phrenology head.

The man pointed at the tag in the lower left hand of the canvas and coyly named a slightly lower price, "Because I (giggle) like you, I've reduced the price somewhat."

An hour later Egon found himself with a bulky panting balanced across his knees and an invitation to "Come see me, ANY TIME handsome!" from a man wearing women's underwear, tire chains, old Halloween novelties, and a kilt, The phrenology head, now wrapped in old newspapers was clamped between his feet in the garishly lit subway car loaded down with Saturday evening partygoers, street punks, and cleaning ladies on their way to and from work.

Snorting the last dregs of cheap incense from his nostrils but not his clothes into a tissue, Egon's head wobbled back and forth in time to the rocking of the car as he fought the urge to doze off, something he'd been doing a lot of lately – yes, influenza was definitely pursuing him... Egon's head fell forward just before his stop, glasses sliding down his nose and the gurgle and roar of water filled his head…

_It was wet and cold - light rippled off of the gray surface high above him. Around him he could feel the slight jostling of logs and trash against his body as the current that both supported and trapped him rushed by smelling of mud and diesel._

_A flight of pigeons wheeled overhead as a barge chugged past, jostling the logs and trash and Egon's body so that his hand drifted past his milky eyes, Between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand was a tattooed 8 ball with a crack in it… his jaw dropped open in a silent scream._


	4. Chapter 4

Egon slept through his subway stop.

He slept through the next one.

And the next.

Head back, mouth open, he slept through more stops, sweating, breath ragged and raspy…

…_as someone grabbed him by the braids, holding him down by them, the sting of a belt on his shoulder blades, of hiding under beds while his father raged around the house looking for him, stealing cigarettes from the candy store, of lighting up in the school bathroom while trying to memorize formula, staring longingly at the dresses in the downtown shop windows, getting caught stealing a pair of shoes, of stealing leftover spaghetti from the trash cans behind his best friend's father's garage one cold night because his new stepmother wanted to go the Vegas and didn't want a kid along, of picking the lock of his best friend's house during Christmas break, softly walking into his room, watching him sleep on clean sheets, of envying his microscope, his telescope, his model molecules and the poster of Einstein, of taking the stack of coveted college textbooks – they were so rich they wouldn't miss them, right?_

_(So that's where they got off to.)_

_If he could only read them, he could catch up with his best friend and join him..._

_...of running away to Woodstock, of wandering around in the music and the mud at the age of thirteen in a dress made of somebody's old lace curtains, half stoned out of his mind, hair unbraided and down to his waist, flowing in the wind as Jimi Hendrix (I hate Jimi Hendrix.) bared it all through his guitar and Janis (Who is Janis?) took everyone all the way – doing everyone that came along, of getting caught on the ride to Haight-Ashbury when the Quaaludes he'd gulped down reacted bad so that the ghosts he could usually ignore became threatening and he'd flaked out during Easy Rider (That was a boring movie without a point.) and being sent home to his father in disgrace, of being dragged through the house, (a strange, dirty house, not at all the surgical cleanliness his mother demanded) as his stepmother (I have no step mother.) jeered insults, the slap of the belt, back still stinging from the belt, back in blue jeans, taking the books out of their hiding place under his mattress, making notes in the margins, promising that he'd return them as soon as he understood them – they were so rich they wouldn't miss them, of going back to school, the stares, the ghosts, always the ghosts, his grandmother screaming until the County took over, the welcome silence, the belt, the stares, the running away over and over again, of sending his best friend a birthday present – his favorite snack and a drawing that took a week to do when his dad and the teachers weren't looking, of wondering if he got it (My freshman room mate, Peter Venkman, tore the drawing into strips and roiled joints in the paper. Then he ate the Twinkie after smoking an entire nickel bag of marijuana during finals.) of never hearing from him, of stealing pot roast from his dad's trash cans one night because he couldn't take the hunger and it had smelled so good, of hitchhiking to MIT and standing outside in the dark, ghosts, curtain dress, and unbraided hair swirling around him in the evening breeze looking up at his profile in the third floor window against the light as he studied until 2 a.m. – wanting to toss a pebble against the window to get his attention just so he could wave and maybe come up and hang out for a while, maybe talk physics and art but not having the courage, of getting sent back by Campus Security, of another beating, in school suspension, of accidentally failing English Composition, of dropping out surrounded by ghosts, of hitchhiking to Haight Ashbury of hooking to earning his way – men like 'em young, of wandering the streets of San Francisco, caught up in the magic until he got caught and sent back in disgrace… of the abortion, (?) of dropping out, of trying to get into the WACS (I sat with Peter as he got silently drunk the day his mother's letter came informing him that his older brother Robert had been killed in the Tet Offensive, would he please come home for the funeral?) Of trying to get into the WAVES, the SPARS, the WRENS - nobody wants a minor with a record..._

_...of being personally asked to leave the Family by Charlie Manson himself because he was too weird even for them, of hearing the news of what Charlie and his Family had done to Sharon Tate the night after he'd left, underage, hung over, and wondering where he could go, the books that he thought were his ticket OUT so very far away under the mattress in his room, his old man waiting for him with a belt (My father never laid a hand on me.), of sending another birthday present..._

_ ...of waking up one day in the mid-70s in rehab, of walking into a High School somewhere in Kansas City and absent-mindedly passing the G.E.D. upon request without even studying, of getting into some small-time State university (I was working on my fourth Doctorate at Cornell.), of casually wandering through the four years it took to get a B.F.A in art because it was the only thing he could think of, figuring that he was stupid to even think he could play in his now un-findable best friend's league, of taking small jobs here and there just to pay the rent, of blowing his stack, ghosts streaming around him… of wondering where hi best friend had gotten off to, of seeing his picture on a national magazine the day he got fired AGAIN for blowing up at a client and his stupid diaper campaign, of facing reality and doing the best her could to record what he saw that everybody else seemed able to ignore..._

_...of getting a tattoo of an 8 ball on one hand because it seemed right... (Tattoos are irrational.)_

_ ...of finding a gallery willing to sell his work, of waking up in the back of his battered BMW at 2 a.m. reading by the flickering dome light once more about his best friend in the same old magazine, of how he was doing so much better than he was, of how he wanted so badly to see him again, of finding the courage to go home (I don't like home.) one more time because maybe your best friend would like his books back and hey, stealing 'em hadn't been as good an idea as it had seemed at the time, what had it gotten him? _

…_of not even making it to his old room before his old man caught him slipping back into the house he'd tried his best to escape over and over again._

…_of the argument that led to a shoving match._

…_of falling in the kitchen... _

…_of catching the back of his head on the edge of the stove on his way to the dirty, cracked linoleum._

…_of the world going red, then black as his father, dirty and unshaven as ever, leaned over his him, slapping his face, shaking him, apologizing for the first time in his angry, drunken life, trying to get him up on his feet as hot fluid poured out of his ears._

…_of being dimly aware of being wrapped in something._

…_of a long, rough ride._

…_of the cold…_

…_of the sensation of flying, stopped the cold, wet slap of water… (Help! Dad, where are you?)_

…_of trying to break free… (I can't breathe!)_

…_of bobbing to the surface… (This isn't real.)_

…_unable to move… the water painfully cold… (Help! Father, how could you do this to me?)_

…_fading away watching the stars as the icy current dragged him under a bridge he thought he recognized…_

"Yo, buddy. You can either sleep it off in the drunk tank or you can sleep it off in your own bed. What'll it be?"

Egon surfaced, gasping, dropping the painting, banging his head on the glass window behind him, trying to process what was going on in his head while focusing on the cop standing over him poking him with a kitana.

Egon mumbled out something, gathered up the painting (The phrenology head was gone, as was his wallet), and with a slight stagger accompanied by hot and cold chills, made his way out of the empty subway car, across the platform, up the stairs and on to the street where it was snowing, only the snow melted before it could reach the ground.

"_Sorry, asshole didn't mean to leak all over you like that."_

"Who said that?" Egon turned slowly, thick glasses glinting in the streetlights overhead, eyes scanning; except for the falling snow and the painting, he was alone.

He waved down the one lone cab that he saw; Peter, or was it Ray? Paid his fare when he got back to the station.


	5. Chapter 5

It was dawn now, and the Hope Memorial Bridge, coated with a thin glaze of ice followed by snow now falling heavily from the Northwest, was shut down; traffic re-routed to lesser, arteries as Cleveland started up for the day and headed for work.

Snow and ice wasn't the real reason the traffic had been rerouted.

Cars were being towed off of the bridge from where a ball of light was darting in and out of the superstructure – engines dead, electrical systems fried.

Down below, sheets of ice were formed and broke apart, grinding together and the bridge footings.

The pigeons had left for warmer surroundings, leaving their roosts and taking their chances in the high wind that caused the streetlamps to sway and groan as a hand drifted in the muddy water below, a hand with an 8 ball tattooed on it between the thumb and forefinger as the face of the owner was quietly ground away against the rough concrete by the motion of the current.


	6. Chapter 6

"Yo guys! We're here. Get ready to mount up and show 'em how we do it in New York!" Peter Venkman's voice blared through the haze in Egon's head. For someone who only needed 14 minutes of sleep per day, Egon had been engaged in an awful lot of sleep lately.

"I am definitely incubating influenza," he thought while stepping out of Ecto 1 and onto the windswept deck of Cleveland, Ohio's Hope Memorial Bridge, He blew his nose before adjusting his hood against the arctic blast of horizontal Lake effect snow.

They had been waiting for him inside the fire station, Ecto 1 idling, winter coats pulled on over their coveralls. The painting was left propped against Janine's desk as with an aching head, he'd climbed into the old converted ambulance without any clear idea of where they were going.

Janine handed in coffee, sandwiches and a map before tossing a box of tissues at Egon from a safe distance, "I don't know what you're comin' down with _MISTER_ Spengler, but keep it to yourself – I'm not getting' paid enough to catch _your_ germs!"

Janine had been like that since the 4th of July bar-b-cue on the roof when Peter shoved the two of them into the third floor broom closet, locking them in.

This led to exactly 60 minutes and 35.2 seconds of awkward but not exactly unpleasant fumbling around in the dusty darkness until Winston needed more charcoal - both came tumbling out wearing each other's glasses with Janine yanking her skirt down and her halter up and Egon's shirt hanging out in the back. Those outside the closet cheered –after hurling Egon's glasses at him and snatching hers off of his face, Janine stormed home, refusing to answer her phone for a week. The knowing smirks Ray Stanz still kept shooting Egon every time Janine entered the room told him that plainly there were many things that the boy-faced Ray knew that Egon _didn't _and needed to research. What was strange, Janine now no longer wanted to go with him to museums; something which Egon kept telling himself was unimportant – so why did he always feel a little lost without her on his days off? A geranium as a peace offering might help.

Germs and geraniums aside, the Ohio Department of Transportation had called that morning; something was wrong with one of the bridges leading in and out of Cleveland – something wrong that only they could deal with now that everything else had been tried.

The bridge superintendent, hunched against the cold despite his heavy coat, filled them in on what had happened: for the last five days what they thought was a routine electrical fault kept stalling traffic on the bridge. A man had been injured when the bucket truck he was working out of shorted, burning out all the wiring in the hydraulics and engine – by ball lightning that acted like a mean dog. That same day, the electrical systems of vehicles crossing the bridge burned out, which meant traffic was brought to a halt by stalled vehicles needing to be towed. Ball lightning had been spotted bouncing off of hoods and windshields, and anyone who left their vehicles, got chased.

While Ray and the superintendent tried to hold onto a schematic of the bridge and Winston and Peter suited up, Egon took out his PKE meter and activated it. Throat burning, he started walking across down the broken yellow line, intently watching the little screen – yes, there was something there, something he'd never seen before… sizzling, a ball of lightning rose up out of the salt and sand dusted asphalt beneath his feet, knocking him sprawling and his glasses flying.

"Whoah, whoah, WHOAH – man down! Man down" Peter yelled, dropping his proton pack and running towards Egon, who lay looking up at the dirty looking sky, hair on end, PKE meter in smoking pieces fanned around him. Ray ran up, and dropped to his knees, trying to support Egon's head, "Help me get him up, Peter easy, easy, watch his head,.oh my God, he's heavier than he looks!" Winston crab-ran, bring up the rear, proton pack activated, warily tracking Egon's assailant as it lazily bounced across the pavement, and with a hiss, flipped over the side with a gibbering Slimer right behind it.

"No mom, I'm not going to blow up the garage again… I'm going… to… pass out." Egon mumbled, hands reaching up to adjust his glasses, which now lay bent and half melted on the asphalt behind them even as Ray and Peter tried to get him off the bridge, one arm over each shoulder. "Has anyone seen my glasses?" Knees buckling under his own weight, Egon pulled free before they could catch him, sending him face down on the cold surface – the rubber soles of his boots were melted.

"Somebody call an ambulance!" Peter yelled. "Fuck, he's stopped breathing – Ray, start CPR!"

As everything went black, Egon thought he heard someone say, "Sorry about that asshole, I'm still getting the hang of electricity."


	7. Chapter 7

Head feeling like he'd tried another round of self-trepanation, Egon mumbled "Did you do this?" as the Emergency Room staff cut him out of what remained of his clothes; every zipper and fastener which hadn't been blown off was fused shut while any plastic had melted.

"What'd he say?" asked an intern slicing through the heavy cloth of Egon's coveralls.

"He's babbling." replied the doctor on duty before adding "Set up an EKG... I've never seen electricity do _that_ before."

Egon would have found it interesting to learn that the exit wounds on his hands and feet were all in the shape of figure 8s, but he'd passed out again, blearily watching what he thought might be a woman with long black hair streaked with gray wearing a lace dress which flowed as if under water standing at his feet beside the intern who was cutting off his melted boots.

He squinted, trying to focus on the blur that was her face; she looked past him and vanished

After Egon was stabilized and moved to ICU, a janitor mopped up a pool of frigid water from the floor beside the examination table.


	8. Chapter 8

_Egon floated in dirty freezing water, phone on the bedside table ringing as a barefoot woman, lank dark hair flowing about her increasingly indistinct face, lace dress dripping frigid water on the floor passed the bright rectangle of light that was the door of his hospital room, paused to look at him before fading away, monitors quietly functioning… _

…_hands, one with an 8 ball tattoo drifting in the muddy water as his face ground away in the gurgling, rushing darkness, cell by cell by cell by cell… the phone falling off the hook untouched…_

… _a frigid hand against his face, resting there as his mother's had when he came to at 14 in a hospital somewhere in Massachusetts after his appendix ruptured, peritonitis nearly killing him so that the Boogey Man who followed him to MIT would have to go hungry for a month…_

… _his mother sat in the darkened room crying – something she never did, his father flatly stating, "Crying about this is irrational; he didn't die." as he mechanically patted her shoulder, voice his usual monotone, face blank, for once not registering icy approval or disapproval, and his mother had screamed at his father, "God dammit, for once, just for once could you be a normal human being? We almost lost him – our son, OUR SON, nearly DIED!" _

…_of his father slowly removing his hand and stiffly walking out of the room, face blanker than ever…his mother regaining her usual composure…_

…_Egon wanted to tell her that he loved them both but what would saying it prove? Of the mashed Twinkie on his hospital pillow, a tinny voice washing out of the phone receiver, "You found it! I thought that bitch of a nurse ate it after all the trouble I went to!"_

_,.. of his mother coming in, snatching it away from him, and dropping it in to the trash - static coming out the phone receiver as "Damn, I could have eaten it – I saved it from my school lunch after I heard what happened … (static)…stole…. old man's wallet… rode the train (static) bitches at the front desk (static) wouldn't let me see you… (static) not (static) family…. Snuck in when you were sleeping…( static)… nothing to eat all weekend…" _

…_his mother's voice saying "Don't eat that, you don't know where it's been!"_

…_of riding to the hospital in the beat up Venkmann station wagon, head on Peter's mother's lap, with her stroking his hair as Peter's father swerved through traffic to the Emergency Room, the chubby woman with the kind face cooing, "Go ahead, I know it hurts boy-o, I know it hurts, nobody minds if you cry around here boy-o, nobody minds, let it out, I know it hurts…" as a tall, awkward boy in a bow tie and unfashionable pompadour doubled up vomiting from the pain in the back seat, right side burning… of a sudden hot explosion in his right side as they lay him on the County Hospital emergency room examination table, followed by a brief moment of painless clarity all too quickly interrupted by a different kind of pain when a gush of pus and digestive juices flooded his belly, Thanksgiving Dinner at Peter Venkmann's parent's people-dog-cat-children-goldfish-hamster crowded little house interrupted when the growing ache that had been mildly inconveniencing Egon all week blossomed in the middle of the meal, knocking him to his knees out of the chair where he had been sitting trying to keep track of all the names and faces,…_

…_the receiver blasted out static, "…you got turkey? Shit, all I got that day right was Spam, right out of the can, and stale Fritos!" _

…_and a cold, wet hand rested against his cheek making him shiver even as he pressed into it, the receiver giving off static, and the tinny sound like running water… _

…_8-ball hand floating past his milky eyes, "(static) I can't remember my name… (static)…I think the river (static) washed it away…" _

… the hand against Egon's cheek warmed. He opened his eyes, squinting, the red-headed outline against the hall doorway pulled it's hand away, Egon squinted harder, hands itching and burning, the flu a dull ache in the background, "Janine?"

"I brought your other glasses up from New York on my way to the Hope Bridge." Janine's hands were deep in her coat pockets, she scowled, or so he thought, "Ray told me you blew 'em up. Again."

Egon managed to put them on. Janine and the bedside monitors came into focus. Yes, she was scowling, "Hope Bridge?"

"Ray called at 2 am., got me right out of bed," Janine scanned the dim room, "He says, "Hey, we got a problem, ship us the spare packs and meters Overnight, the wiring on the ones we have just got fried, and by the way Egon tried to electrocute himself _again_ and his glasses melted –so ship those too if you can find 'em." – so of course there's over two feet of snow on the ground and I can't get a delivery truck to come to the station for pickup – so I loaded 'em all in the back of my car; took me nearly two DAYS what with the bad weather– and… _oh my Gawd,_ this hospital is a DUMP, nothing like Manhattan- water all over the floor and the phone off the hook, and…and…

…

…

"...Ray said you nearly died in the ambulance."

"I didn't."

"Gee, is that all you can say... oh, _fugheddaboutit!_ - I gotta job to do!" Janine paused in mid-stomp, and scowling, reached out to touch Egon's face, snapping, "I don't know why I bother sometimes!" before retreating back into the brightly lit hallways where a janitor was mopping up a trail of water on the floor in front of Egon's room. Egon, trying to figure out what was wrong with Janine, noticed that the phone on the bedside table was indeed, off the hook, but the cord connecting it to the wall, looked burned and there was no dial tone.


	9. Chapter 9

The hefty nurse who came to check on Egon an hour later that morning expected to find him in a semi-coma, not staring down at a reverse engineered phone, parts laid out neatly on the covers in the order of disassembly, a blackened half melted wall cord laid out like a dead snake beside a neatly coiled nasal tube and a pile of used dressings. Janine must not have told the nurse at the desk that he was awake on her way out.

Maintaining her composure, the large woman alerted the physician on duty – and Egon spent the rest of the morning discovering a few things about himself:

That the electric charge which had fried his PKE meter, blown him half out of his clothes, and rendered his glasses a twisted mess, should have killed him, but didn't.

That the second degree burns on his hands and feet in the shape of an "8" were rapidly healing, despite the itching, blistering, and peeling... and that picking at it was _not_ a good idea, and

That thanks to the charge he took, Egon now had an interesting second degree burn pattern, like the rhizoids of his favorite pathogenic fungi, adorning his upper torso, shoulders, arms, and back. Regrettably, these fractal scars, which he found fascinating, would fade in time, but hopefully not before he could show them to Janine; though judging how she acted around him lately, this wasn't likely to happen for a while– so he asked the x-ray technician to send copies of the documentary photographs to the fire station back in New York for framing just in case Janine ever changed her mind. These too, itched, blistered, and peeled maddeningly.

A fourth thing Egon learned about himself was that it was better to administer a radioactive iodine I.V. to a research subject prior to a full body CT scan than to BE the research subject; particularly when he had the flu. Shivering and miserable, hot and cold as well as wet and dry all at the same time on the flatbed, which seemed to be rocking like a boat in rough water as the room circled, the interesting experience of GETTING a CT scan had been considerably diminished when he vomited over the side, delaying the experience until the mess could be cleaned up.

And of course the whole experience was rendered worse when Egon then learned that the entire gang, including Janine, had been in the in the little waiting area outside of Radiology and had heard the whole debacle.

But the fifth thing Egon realized about himself happened while going through the CT scan, post-gastro-intestinal upheaval was, that he had been attacked by a second entity, one that had come right at him out of nowhere, shoving him back so that most of the charge presumably dispersed harmlessly into the structure of the bridge as he blacked out out; a shove along while a woman screamed, _"Ah-nee-yo anni!" _

What reminded him was the Korean radiology intern administering the IV. He had asked her if he could have copies of the scans; she had said, "Ah-nee-yo anni… sorry, I forget, I mean, no, I can't do that without your doctor's permission."

Egon had lay on the motorized examination table while the CT scanner clanked and whirred around him, wondering why a ghost in Cleveland would be screaming at him in Korean, one of the few languages he just knew enough of to be able to avoid ordering kim-chi, which always gave him a headache.


	10. Chapter 10

Egon learned one final thing that morning after the CT scan when he raised one sleeve on his hospital gown to show his friends the extremely interesting Lichtenberg figures that the current had burned into his skin. The silence which followed was something he'd never experienced before, Ray pausing in mid story about how the same force later on burned out their proton packs and PKE meters, Peter for once not joking about anything, Winston just stared… while Janine murmured "Oh my GAWD!" over and over again as she sat down on the arm of his wheelchair and held him tight.


End file.
